“We’ll start with 100, then a couple hundred, then 100,000, then a million until we have a truly sustainable colony. It will happen in my lifetime. Faster than you think.”

He also said he expected SpaceX to “impose our own legal regime,” but that it would be “interesting to see how it plays out with terrestrial governments exerting control.” Anderman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Independent before publication.

While colonisation may be the way that SpaceX and other companies think about extraterrestrial exploration, legally Musk has more of a chance of creating a community rather than a colony, as he would still be under the governance of the US.

“A community is a group of persons with common interests and characteristics. Colony is a legal term applied to territory subject to the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the colonising State,” Professor Sa’id Mosteshar, Director of London Institute of Space Policy and Law, told The Independent.